STS-91 Day 1 Highlights

The United States began its last flight to the Russian Mir Space
Station today with a flawless, on-time liftoff of the Space Shuttle
Discovery and a six-member crew at 5:06 p.m. CDT.

During the next two days, Commander Charlie Precourt will watch over
periodic engine firings that will guide Discovery toward the Mir,
which was passing over Ireland, almost 5,000 miles ahead of the
shuttle, at liftoff. With Precourt aboard Discovery are Pilot Dominic
Gorie and Mission Specialists Frankliin Chiang-Diaz, Wendy Lawrence,
Janet Kavandi and Valery Ryumin, a veteran Russian Space Agency
cosmonaut.

Awaiting a ride home from the Mir is astronaut Andy Thomas, who has
been aloft since Jan. 22. Thomas is the last of seven astronauts who
have stayed aboard the Mir during the past three and a half years,
completing a combined total of almost 1,000 days on the Russian
station.

Discovery is planned to dock with Mir around noon CDT
Thursday. Tonight, the crew will begin powering up the Alpha Magnetic
Spectrometer, a scientific instrument that will probe questions about
the creation of the universe from the shuttle's cargo bay. The
instrument is intended to look for antimatter supposedly left over
after the creation of the universe according to the "Big Bang"
theory. It also will look for signs of "dark matter" that has been
theorized to constitute most of the universe.

The official liftoff time for Discovery was 5:06:24 p.m. CDT. The
crew will begin an eight-hour sleep period at 10:06 p.m. CDT today and
awaken for the first full day in orbit of the mission at 6:06 a.m. CDT
Wednesday. The next Mission Control Center status report will be
issued at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday.